Intel finds design flaw in Sandy Bridge chipset

Intel has warned of a flaw with the 6 Series chipset, code-named Cougar Point, that accompanies its latest Sandy Bridge processors, which gradually degrades the performance of the SATA ports over time and thus affects the speed of hard drives and optical drives. In a statement put out this morning, the company attributed the problem to a design issue and said it expects the cost to repair and replace the chip to be around $700 million -- a recall notice should follow soon.

Good to know this seems to be more of a QC issue than a design flaw. Have to wonder if it was a real breakdown on the manufacturing side, or if it was missed in the mad dash to hit the market hard and steal AMD's Fusion thunder?

That's hard to say. I work right next to our QA department and it seems like no matter how long or extensive the testing, something always gets through. And of course, we all know how buggy (in general) software releases are no matter how much they test. There's no way they can account for every single hardware/OS configuration in the world when testing software. Whether hardware or software, sometimes you just gotta release it to the masses and keep your fingers crossed that if any bugs show up they'll be quick fixes for the problem.

I give props to Intel for owning up to as soon as they could and taking immediate corrective steps.

By the sound of things, degradation ranges between 5% for casual users to 15% for heavier users. At least Intel came out with it now, as opposed to sitting on it and hoping nobody notices.

If I were in possession of a P67 board, I'd probably wait a while before replacing my 'faulty' board; everyone's going to be madly returning their boards. Unless you're a power user that needs all the speed you can get, this problem isn't that terrible.

Looks like newegg has stopped selling the Sandy Bridge processors along with Gigabyte 1155 motherboards. Just saw this article on TechReport Gigabyte, Newegg stop selling Sandy Bridge mobos. Did a quick check on newegg and sure enough the Sandy Bridge processors and Gigabyte motherboards have been pulled.